Ghost Town Adventure

I love adventures. I love to see new sites and discover new places. However, I always seem to go far away (across oceans or state lines) to have these adventures. But there are SO MANY cool places just minutes from where I live and I never seem to take the time to go see them. Well, that all changed. On January 2, my mom, sister, and I decided to find some Ghost Towns nearby...there are dozens in my county alone (most are more ruins than standing structures, but they are still cool).

So we began our adventure in search of Contention City. We drove to the location that Google Map pointed us too, but all we found was the beginning of a trail to the Presidio Santa Cruz de Terrenate. We decided to make the 3 mile round trip hike. It was a beautiful day, bright and sunny with a cool breeze. Perfect for hiking.


The trail we began on met up with the San Pedro Trail (which used to be the train tracks for this area. The tracks have been removed, so it's now just the bed).

This next picture you can see the San Pedro trail from a distance. Notice the copper deposits left by the many trains that passed over this trail.

Once we got on the San Pedro Trail, we only had 1/4 mile left before we arrived at the Presidio. We didn't know what to expect when we got there, but we were eagerly anticipating exploring a Ghost Town.

Finally, we arrived.


We looked around, but all we could see was this structure. Something told us this was not the presidio.

The sign above was the beginning of another trail...this time it was a 1/2 mile circle to see the presidio. We were tired, but we had come this far, so we continued onward. We ran into the San Pedro River, which had some water following in it. It was very beautiful.

Finally, the trail took us into an area where the remains of a huge adobe structure still stood. The site was abandoned in 1781. The following is what is left of the chapel.

This is the remains of the commander's quarters.

There wasn't much left standing. The last plaque on the trail was titled "Abandonment" and it stated "The hardships of Terrenate -- climate, isolation, inadequate supplies, and successful Apache raids -- led Spain to abandon the site after only five years. While Terrenate dissolved back into the dessert landscape, other more successful Spanish forts and missions grew into major communities of the present Southwest."

We didn't know what the Presidio of Santa Cruz de Terrenate was before we went to find it, but when we arrived at our next Ghost Town, Fairbank, we found a model of the presidio. This is what it looked like back in 1781:

As I mentioned above, we also explored another Ghost Town called Fairbank. This is more like what I envisioned Ghost Towns to be...structures still standing but abandoned.

We ended our day by discovering a new restaurant in Bisbee, another really old town founded in 1880, but this one is still inhabited. It is a really cool town to explore.

So we had a very fun adventure and we didn't even have to travel very far to find these great discoveries. And there is still more to see.